11. Star Wars Video Games: 1977 to 1991

Star Wars Video Games

Contrary to its modern stature as a video game licensing powerhouse, there weren't any Star Wars games released for the first five years of the franchise. If someone was interested in such things, you could actually do a cool project tracing the evolution of video games as a whole via the Star Wars franchise. From barely a game in the 80s, to primitive versions of genres emerging in the 90s, to AAA titles in later years. That's not this blog though, so I'll just be doing a real quick hits on the first fifteen years or so. 

   

 In 1982 (the year before RotJ, and two after ESB) the marginally famous Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back finally dropped for the Atari 2600.

Atari 2600: ESB Cover Art

Whoever came up with Star: Wars: did a great job! (Wookieepedia)

It's one of those old games, very typical of the platform, that we'd barely consider a game today. A line of ATATs march towards Echo Base, you shoot them about a million times each, they change color and explode. You won't kill them all, but you'll get a high score before you lose. The "physics" such as they are kind of remind me of Joust but without the flapping. 

Ad for Death Star Battle. By far the most Disco looking Star Wars game (Wookieepedia)

A year later, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi: Death Star Battle does a better job. Kind of reminds me of Yar's Revenge. You blast some TIE Interceptors, duck through a hole in the second Death Star's shield, pop through hyperspace, and then play a sort of reverse Space Invaders as you try to destroy the Death Star one block at a time. It's weird, but pretty solid for the time. 

Rounding out Parker Brothers' take on the trilogy, was Star Wars: Jedi Arena. It's very Tron. You play as a Jedi, trying to bounce remote blasts off your lightsaber at another Jedi. It's the kind of thing that'd be fun as a mini-game today, but hard to imagine sitting with for more than a few minutes.

Jedi Arena box art.
I was going to make a joke about the number of pixels in Luke's face, but it's a 2600 game. (Wookieepedia)

In 1983 and 1985, Atari released arcade games for ANH and ESB. The latter is a conversion kit of the first (meaning it was an extra circuit board added to the an existing game) so they play similarly. Both were available (along with the RotJ game I'll get to in a minute) in Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike on the Gamecube. Darth Vader listens to Meco's "Galactic Funk" cover of the Star Wars theme while he plays them in a hanger. It's a fun way of jazzing (discoing?) up what easily couldn't just been a menu.

Of the two, I prefer the New Hope version. Shooting Death Stars is more fun than AT-ATs. Both have delightfully digitized voice clips from the movie, and some very firebally blasters. They're passable first person rail shooters.

In between (shortly after the film's release) Atari made a Return of the Jedi game in a very different style. Spy Hunter (released by Midway the same year) is probably the closest comparison, with the player controlling Luke on a speederbike, Lando in the Falcon, and Chewie in an AT-ST. Digitized speech is included (with some clips from the other two movies). This game is probably the best of the three. 

Star Wars Poster: but make it arcade-style very successful (Wookieepedia) 

Star Wars: Droids released in 1988 is... I dunno, it's not really a platformer (not enough jumping) a really boring/bad shooter? 

Those arrows at the bottom are the controls. You need to select them, instead of just pushing left, right, etc. on your controller (Wookieepedia)

There's minigames thrown in at least. It sort of reminds me of a Johnny Quest game I had as a kid. It was nominally an adventure game, but had a variety of minigames. The last (and worse) of which was sort of Pac-Man but, similarly to Droids, you had to press buttons on the screen instead of just tapping left, right, etc. on your keyboard. Ugh.

Attack on The Death Star released in 1991 is sort of an update of the original arcade game. Wireframe graphics, trench run, digitized voices, etc. The graphics are perhaps a smidge better, and it's an actual (if primitive) flight sim, rather than a rail shooter.

Which brings us to the A New Hope platformers. The first (by Namco) came out in Japan in 1987. 

Nope, definitely not Mega Man.

It's probably the better of the two and plays a lot like Megaman. Jump shoot/slash, use various special abilities (not acquired by beating the bosses, just all unlocked at the start). It's pretty decent as far as generic NES games go. The music (just the main theme looping over and over) is kind of annoying.

The second was released by JVC in 1991, and would be ported to just about every 8-bit console and handheld over the next few years. This is the only game on this list I actually played as a kid. It's a bit more ambitious, with a semi-open world, vehicle sections, multiple playable characters (Luke, Han, and Leia) upgrades, etc. Unfortunately, it controls like Luke and co. are pogo-sticking through molasses, making the platforming sections downright painful. 

A precursor to the modern "not gameplay footage" trailer

They followed up with an Empire Strikes Back game in 1992. It's a bit closer to the earlier Namco game, closer to a standard platformer (with limited vehicle segments) and more force powers (selected on a menu with the cantina theme playing for some reason). Controls are a bit better (Luke now jumps like he's doing a rhythmic gymnastics routine, a slight improvement). Probably the weakest of the tree, simply since it's so generic.

And that's it, every Star Wars game released up to 1991 (slightly after Heir to the Empire). Future video game entries will pop up here and there, but probably more thoroughly covering a single game (or series of games) that I like/find significant, rather than scattershotting everything released. None of these really add anything to the franchise, but there's little enough pre HttE that I can actually look at almost every piece of Star Wars media to help set the scene. Next week, spin off TV!